tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1991402668327441142.post8202710958999636280..comments2024-01-29T15:41:12.310-08:00Comments on Rich Puchalsky's blog: Doctorow's Little BrotherRich Puchalskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10543499708727953026noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1991402668327441142.post-6807351552996654792010-11-28T19:15:15.332-08:002010-11-28T19:15:15.332-08:00Thanks for the local info, spyder. Yeah, that was...Thanks for the local info, spyder. Yeah, that was one of my problems with the book -- the existing prisons and torture don't count because those are scary criminals who have been put there by respectable people wearing black robes, and no kid like Marcus ever gets thrown in there without cause. I guess.<br /><br />Maybe he thought that since it's a YA book it needed a happy ending. But... the best YA books are still honest. This book is sort of half-honest. There's one scene in which Marcus' friend drops out of the kids' rebellion because he's a Latino, and he tells Marcus that he can't get away with as much as a white kid can. And Marcus doesn't want his friend to drop out, but he understands. Yet that understanding doesn't make him question his "I love America, I just want us to follow our ideals" bit at all. A return to normalcy is a return to a reality in which his friend is only normally at risk for no reason -- but that's OK, you know? First get these scary DHS thugs away from the white people, and then sometime later maybe we can do something about that.<br /><br />Marcus stops by an anarchist bookstore, too. In a countervailing example of Doctorow's commitment to realism, he goes there to try to impress his girlfriend, and to pick up an Emma Goldman poster with that "If I can't dance" quote that she never actually said or wrote.Rich Puchalskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13565210317964576866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1991402668327441142.post-10658662052220313592010-11-28T16:57:20.044-08:002010-11-28T16:57:20.044-08:00I thought California already had its own Gitmo by ...I thought California already had its own Gitmo by the Bay: Pelican Bay State Prison. The SVU unit is a pathological nightmare, without heat, and 22.5 hours of solitary each day, when the prisoners aren't tortured. And if Pelican Bay isn't sufficient, then Centinela State Prison on the Salton Sea makes up for it; with a fully charged electric fence (originally 500 amps killing all wildlife within 100 yards, but reduced to 50 amps to make it safer for the birds flying around) separating the four groups of prisoners, the prison runs on a smaller staff than any of the other Level IV in the state. Doctorow could have written a non-fiction book that would have been much scarier.spyderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14251017646611361354noreply@blogger.com